myschyf | (no subject)

Last night, I had an epiphany. Judith Martin (Miss Manners) was on the Colbert Report, and I told Jeff about finding one of her books when I was fourteen or so. One of the reasons I checked it out of the library was because it was a *small* temporary library (it was in a storefront in the mall near the Safeway) and I was running out of stuff to read. The thickness of the book was a large mark in its favor.

So, I was telling Jeff this and realized that, not everyone reads up to grade level, nor do they test out. (Huh?)

Okay. When I was in third grade, we were in a kindergarten room. Since we didn't need all the room, they used part of the room to store the books for other classes. We also had an in-room library. I can't remember if I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to read the other books or not. I don't think it ever occured to me, honestly. So, I found a big stack of *big* reading books (which was where I first read an excerpt from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I cannot adequately express how beautiful it was. She described a woman's skin as "dark as a plum, full to bursting with juice" (paraphrased) and I could see it. Hell, I could damn near *taste* it. That had never happened to me before. Maya Angelou is a remarkable writer)(and human being) (How many parentheses are we up to?)))) and dived happily into them. I was up to the eighth grade book when Mrs. Finney asked me what I was doing. (This took some time, and it's probably good that she didn't know I'd been taking them home with me over the weekends...) I told her I was reading the book. She said "That's an eighth grade book." I said okay. She said "Are you really reading it?" I allowed that I was. She looked at the bit I was reading and asked me about it. I answered all the questions I could.

The next day/weeek/something, I went to the office and they gave me a reading test. I think I was reading at eighth grade level, but it could have been seventh. Every year after that, they tested me and my reading level kept rising, till I tested out sometime in jr. high. I was either reading at college level or beyond.

And for all these years, I've figured that nearly everyone does that. Just that the majority of people don't do it as quickly as I did. When I was discussing the tiny library and my reading damn near everything that appealed to me in the place, it hit me that not everyone reads up to grade level (and while I'd always known that, I never knew it) and not everyone's reading level keeps getting higher till they're all at the same level(ish) somewhere in adulthood.

Wild.

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I can remember a teacher making me take a book back to the library because she decided it was too high a level for me. She acted like I was showing off and I was terribly embarrassed. This was fifth grade and the book was The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. Outside of school I was reading Jane Eyre, but in school I stuck to the rules, so I took the book back. To this day I haven't read Helen Keller's book, because every time I even think of getting it from the library, I feel that same embarrassment. Up until high school I was a very obedient child and I read books from the sections of the library which we were told were appropriate for our age group. In high-school I snuck the Canterbury Tales off the teacher's cart and took it home to read (it wasn't in the school library). I felt like reading that book was sort of presumptuous of me, because I was just one of the average kids and that book was only being read by kids in the advanced classes.

My 13 year old son reads either graphic novels (I'm sure they'd be considered below grade level)and adult non-fiction (above grade level)- neither of which would be on any reading lists if he were in school. It seems schools don't know what to do with the advanced readers, but then they also don't give the other children enough time to learn to read naturally. I have a niece who was flunking Kindergarten (her mom pulled her out) because of her reading skills. A bright happy child now thinks she isn't smart because she wasn't ready to learn to read yet. When I was in Kindergarten, kids learned the alphabet and that was it as far as reading. It just wasn't considered developmentally appropriate to push any more than that on five year old children. My own son's teacher was concerned about him in Kindergarten because he wouldn't look up words to see if they were misspelled. He came to school already reading and writing, but her pushing was turning him off of it! I think schools actually make many kids hate reading. The longer I homeschool the more I think schools should forget all that teaching and testing and just let kids read all day. I'll bet the kids would learn just as much (and by that I mean real learning- not just memorize enough for the test and forget it all later) and they'd be more likely to all grow-up readers.

My 13 year old son reads either graphic novels (I'm sure they'd be considered below grade level)

Depending on the graphic novel in question, the concepts and even the language may be well above his "grade level". There are some "comic book" writers who - though there aren't many words in a graphic novel - manage to pack a lot of information into them.